This third issue of Assessment Matters addresses a number of topics that span the complexity and nature of assessment as it is understood and practised in a range of educational settings, in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Through the papers one can see the multiple, often competing, roles that assessment ...

When I was corresponding with one of the authors in this issue, Emeritus Professor James Popham, I received an advertisement for his latest book in a document called “Popham eflyer”. As educationalists are wont to be, particularly those in assessment and evaluation research, I am at times somewhat distracted by ...

The aim of this article is to clarify some key concepts in the current Norwegian discourse on assessment, the importance of which is essential in working with teachers on developing competence in assessment for learning. Competence is reflected in teachers’ assessment practice, which includes the ability to design a cohesive ...

Given the recent movement toward standards-based education there is a heightened need for teacher competency in the area of assessment and evaluation. However, despite demands for teacher assessment literacy, there are few instances of mandatory assessment courses in preservice teacher education programmes. Further, there is generally a lack of research ...

In a world where schools are accountable for ensuring that all of their students are academically well prepared to enter “the knowledge society”, using assessment in the service of learning is a critical skill for teachers. This article contends that in order to prepare teachers to use assessment for learning ...

Assessment for learning (AfL) practices observed in case studies in a North Queensland school were analysed from a sociocultural theoretical perspective. AfL practices of feedback, dialogue and peer assessment were viewed as an opportunity for students to learn the social expectations for being an autonomous learner, or central participant, within ...

This article provides a synthesis of the literature on formative assessment, self-regulated learning and adaptive help seeking. We do this by developing a classroom model of adaptive help seeking. The model focuses on self-regulated learning, within which the processes of adaptive help seeking and interactive formative assessment are theoretically integrated ...

This paper puts forward a proposal for reviewing the role and purpose of standards in the context of national curriculum and assessment reform more generally. It seeks to commence the much-needed conversation about standards in the work of teachers as distinct from large-scale testing companies and the policy personnel responsible ...

New Zealand’s previous examination-based secondary assessment system can be viewed as encompassing cultural values presenting unfair challenges for indigenous and other nonmajority students. The standards-based National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) incorporates enhanced flexibility, student choice and grading practices independent of comparisons with others. These features may be a better ...

The Premier New Zealand Scholarship, awarded annually to students performing at a high level in multiple secondary school subjects, has historically been dominated by students with successful results in mathematics and the sciences. Three possible explanations for this dominance are explored in the present article. The first is that greater ...